DT's The Undiscovered Frontier

You awaken in pain, coughing fluids out of your lungs while writhing on the damp, wet floor of a cave, naked and cold. You blink painfully in the little light that penetrates the cave from the outside. Your squinting eyes and straining ears detect other coughing and naked bodies around you, in the same vulnerable and frightened state that you are in. You stand on wobbling legs, wondering why you feel so weak and why it takes you a moment to get used to feeling your muscles once more. The cave has several standing containers, and you count the other humanoids among you and realize that all of you must have fallen out of the containers. As a group you stumble towards the cave entrance, partly for the sun's warmth and partly to find out where you are. As the gaggle of you walk out, a horrific scene greets you. The sand-covered land you stand upon and the humid air you breath are painfully hot, and yet you see no sun in the bright, mist-covered sky. All around you is blasted wasteland, with the broken bodies of two destroyed and dead armies laying in front of you. The bodies near the cave you walked out of are predominantly human, while the opposing force was a strange combination of anthromorphic monstrosities ranging from werewolves to serpent men. It is evident that the outnumbered humans died protecting you, unleashing cataclysmic magic that wiped out both forces. But you also realize that you are lost in confusion. Except for a first and last name that comes unbidden to your lips and the knowledge of martial skills and powerful magic, you have no idea who you or the dead around you are.

I have a crazy idea for a campaign. I plan for it to be fast-paced and action packed. Here are my thoughts:

1.) All DnD 3.5E books are allowed.

2.) All characters will be of a race with a level adjustment of +1. So you will be an aasimar, tiefling, bariaur, melphling, shadowshyft, etc. If you insist on playing a character of level adjustment 0, you can but you will be augmented with an additional +2 to any ability score to compensate. All characters must be bipedal and humanoid.

3.) All characters will start with five character levels. This will be in addition to the +1 level adjustment.

4.) Base attribute scores will be the following divided however the character wants: 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13. This does not include the +1 to attributes gained at 4th level, which should be added after the attributes are distributed.

5.) Any character class will be allowed although I would like a party where everyone could cast spells or at least use magical devices. Magic will be plentiful.

6.) Spellcasters requiring spellbooks will start the adventure writing down spells on whatever material they can find from stone tablets to loose pieces of paper. At the start of the adventure, they have their beginning spells which they jot down from memory.

7.) Equipment will be normal and mundane and calculated as if each character had only 100 gp. There will be no currency remaining. The characters starts out with mundane equipment stripped from the sun-baked dead armies. They will depend initially upon their own powers and skills. They will start finding magical equipment very quickly, however. There will be a fast curve from having barely nothing to having rather powerful items.

The characters' home is a place called Vaerdun, which has been destroyed. Very few civilizations and people have survived the brief and very violent conflict, so the characters will be struggling to survive in a dying land while also finding out who they are and what has happened. Because of that, equipment is in a poor state of repair. A suit of armor will actually be several pieces of mismatched armor brought together. An axe may very well be a metal stick tied to a thin sheet of triangular-shaped metal. Think Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome meets DnD. Because knowledge has sharply dropped, magical abilities will be very important. The start of the campaign will not have many locks and traps for rogues to test themselves against, but I may change that later.

I feel like I'm pbp-booked just about as solidly as I have time to dedicate for gaming and I haven't picked up anything 3.5 since Pathfinder but this sounds interesting and I know DT is a good, story-driven DM. And if Shayuri, Fenris, & Queenie are in then that's just icing on the cake. I'll dust off the books and start thinking of some ideas.

Shayuri, GlassEye, Fenris, and Queenie? I couldn't ask for a better group of players. This is good enough to declare a quorum. I think I could take maybe one more if someone was interested.

Thanks for joining in GlassEye. I would have been interested in making this Pathfinder, but I think 3.5 still has an advantage when it comes to diverse amounts of character classes and pre-designed character races.

We would start as soon as everyone had characters ready to go. I would be happy enough with this group to wait a bit for the character concepts. I know you all are reliable enough, so all I'll ask is to have the majority of your characters fleshed out by the weekend after next. The first weekend of September.

I have the general plot and the major plot hooks already planned out, and am now putting together initial encounters.

As always DT, you know how to bait the hook. This sounds very cool. As Queenie said I am traveling until next Monday so don't have great access to materials, but if you will wait we can work something up. And heck no need for an extensive backstory